Faculty & Staff

I am interested in computer networking and security. Given the significance of the Internet in our economy and society, I am interested in improvements and studies that can have a real-world impact. My recent work has focused on how to make both enterprise and residential networks more secure. In my research work, I am exploring ways to change the traditional computer network communication model using techniques such as software-defined networking and network function virtualization. I am interested in exploring future directions in computing from a systems, networking, and security ...

Computer programming makes it possible to solve problems that otherwise could never be attempted. You can create worlds that could never be possible and help make this world a better place. Most of my professional and personal accomplishments were possible directly because of my understanding and practice of computer programming. For me, programming led me to appreciate fundamental concepts in computer science and directed me to major in CS. I've always been passionate about the possibilities of computer programming; this forms the basis for all of my teaching. At WPI, I teach students about ...

Emmanuel Agu is currently a professor in the computer science department at WPI having received his Masters and PhD in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His research interests are in the areas of computer graphics, mobile computing, and wireless networks. He is especially interested in research into how to use a smartphone as a platform to deliver better healthcare. In collaboration with researchers at WPI and at UMass Medical School, he is currently working on NIH-funded research project to create a mobile application for chronic wound care ...

Matthew studied Programming Language Design and CS Education for his PhD work at Tufts University (August 2022). His focus was on the design and implementation of CS course curricula to support self-efficacy and self regulated learning by providing learning environments and tools to explore the computational thinking needed to make software that resembles the technology learners use on a regular basis. Matthew primarily studied pre-university, first-time programming experiences where learners made smart appliances (IoT), web videogames, computer music performances, and wearable ...

I have research interests and experience in audio engineering, home recording studio design, MIDI systems, building high power electric mountain bikes, commodity solar boat design, and energy delivery cybersecurity while at Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan (CAMS). My WPI IQP was focused in Music building devices to produce and study Psychoacoustics, and my MQP was at Microsoft’s project center to develop a modern technology prototype of an older software platform. My teaching experience started with resetting my family’s lost passwords and general IT support for town friends and family, then at WPI ...

I am an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Before joining WPI, I was an Associate Teaching Professor at Washington State University (WSU) School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (2013-2023) where I served as the coordinator of the Software Engineering MS and BS programs. I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California in 2010. My research interests are in data management and database systems, specifically geospatial and multidimensional data management. My research has ...

Rose's academic interests lie where logic meets computer science: formal methods (the study of software correctness) and programming language theory. Her dissertation focuses on computer-assisted theorem-proving for cyber-physical systems: systems where computers are responsible for keeping physical things and people safe. Her favorite thing about these research topics is the connection to many fields.  She completed her PhD at Carnegie Mellon University in 2021. She was a recent visiting researcher at the National Institute of Informatics (Tokyo, JP) and past visitor at TU Munich ...

Mark Claypool has been a professor of Computer Science and Interactive Media Game Development at WPI since 1997. Mark has a B.A. in Mathematics from Colorado College and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed conference and journal papers and written two books on computer games. He has chaired several ACM conferences on networks, games and multimedia and served on the technical program committee for over 40 of them. His research interests include multimedia networking, congestion control, network games and ...

I'm a transplanted San Francisco hippie who's found his way to New England through Georgia. My interests are in digital media, programming, scientific computing, space exploration, green technology, and the interdisciplinary uses of computing. When not teaching, I enjoy computer programming, reading, creative writing, video production, astronomy, hiking, traveling, and science fiction, among other interests. I also volunteer with FIRST Lego League and with the videography staff at DragonCon in Atlanta. I'm an avid Star Trek fan, but I usually leave my Vulcan ears at home. I’m always happy to ...

Dr. Jun Dai is currently an Associate Professor in Department of Computer Science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). His research interests mainly lie in the intersections of network and distributed system, AI, and cybersecurity, with recent focus on intrusion detection, vulnerability analysis, secure programming, and cybersecurity education. Dr. Dai has published papers in prestigious academic venues, such as IEEE TIFS, ACM SIGMOD, and ACM SIGCSE. He is the Workshop Chair of ACM CCS 2023, and has been a reviewer for top journals like TIFS, TDSC, TVT, and TMC. His projects are mainly ...

I was most recently Associate Director for Graduate Programs in Computer Science at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. While there I also served as supervisor of Curricular Practical Training and lectured on Algorithms, Computational Complexity, Discrete Structures, and the Theory of Computation, among other topics. I previously taught Mathematics at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida. My research interests include Computer Science Education, Security and Privacy, Cryptography, and Combinatorial Games. I am ever alert for new ways to convince his students ...

I am a system researcher by training and am particularly passionate about designing systems mechanisms and policies to handle trade-offs in cost, performance, and efficiency for emerging applications. Since joining WPI, my group’s research has focused on improving system support and performance for machine learning (ML)-related workloads. Because ML is widely adopted in many applications, it is critical to have performant systems that can effectively train, serve, and manage ML models. For example, a cost-effective cloud training framework can help ML practitioners innovate without ...

Information visualization is a powerful means for understanding data and informing human minds. As people begin to rely on visualizations to make high-impact and even life-critical decisions, there is a growing need to ensure that information can be perceived accurately and precisely. My research addresses these challenges by leveraging cognitive and perceptual principles to quantify and model user performance with visualizations. Results from these projects have led to visualization design guidelines in domains such as cyber security and health-risk communication, as well as a better ...

Neil T. Heffernan enjoys doing educational data mining and running the ASSISTments system. ASSISTments helps schools teach better. It’s a web service hosted at WPI that allows teachers to assign nightly homework or daily class work. Students get instant feedback while teachers get live reports. Professor Heffernan enjoys supervising WPI students in creating ASSISTments content and features. He has  6 dozens paper in educational data mining, and 20+ papers in comparing different ways to optimize student learning. Professor Heffernan also Directs the Learning Science and Technologies ...

Professor Kong’s research interests focus on data mining and machine learning, with emphasis on addressing the data science problems in biomedical and social applications. Data today involves an increasing number of data types that need to be handled differently from conventional data records, and an increasing number of data sources that need to be fused together. Dr. Kong is particularly interested in designing algorithms to tame data variety issues in various research fields, such as biomedical research, social computing, neuroscience, and business intelligence. He has been working on ...

My research is interdisciplinary and spans the fields of bioinformatics of complex diseases, computational genomics, systems biology, and biomedical data analytics. We bring expertise in machine learning, data mining, and massive data analytics to study molecular mechanisms underlying genetic disorders, such as cancer, diabetes, and autism, and deadly infections, such as pandemic flu. Our approaches benefit from integrating multi-omic, systems, and structural biology data. We also develop hardware-optimized algorithms to understand the evolution of animal and plant genomes on the large scale. ...

Dr. Lee’s research interests are in information retrieval, natural language processing, social computing, machine learning, and cybersecurity over large-scale networked information systems like the Web and social media. He focuses on threats to these systems and design methods to mitigate negative behaviors (e.g., misinformation, hate speech), and looks for positive opportunities to mine and analyze these systems for developing next generation algorithms and architectures (e.g., recommender system, natural language understanding). He also focuses on AI for social good (e.g., ...

Yanhua Li is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department and Data Science Program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). His research interests focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and data science, with applications in smart cities in many contexts, including spatial-temporal data analytics, urban planning and optimization. Recently, his research has an emphasis on advancing imitation learning and meta learning in AI for learning and influencing the decision-making strategies of urban human agents, such as passenger-seeking strategies of taxi drivers and transit mode/route ...

Dr. Xiaozhong Liu is an Associate Professor at Computer Science and Data Science, WPI. Before that, he was Associate Professor at School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering Indiana University Bloomington. His research interests include natural language processing (NLP), text/graph mining, information retrieval/recommendation, metadata, and computational social science. His dissertation at Syracuse University (advisor Dr. Elizabeth D. Liddy) explored an innovative ranking method that weighted the retrieved results by leveraging dynamic community interests. His recent research is ...

Raha Moraffah is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Prior to joining WPI, she earned her Ph.D. in computer science from Arizona State University. Raha's research spans machine learning, data mining, artificial intelligence, and causal inference, with a specific focus on developing trustworthy and responsible machine learning and generative AI algorithms. She is also interested in integrating a causality perspective into machine learning, paving the way for the advancement of causal machine learning. Her scholarly contributions ...

Jennifer's academic interests lie at the intersection of computer science and biophysics. Her prior research focused on computational modeling of protein structures and the properties of protein interactions. Her work has revealed the important role of steric interactions in protein cores and reframed the prior understanding of the atomic packing of amino acids. She was most recently an IRACDA postdoctoral scholar in the Chemistry department at Tufts University and an adjunct professor at Bunker Hill Community College.

Before joining WPI Data Science/Computer Science, Fabricio Murai was an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science at  University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2016. His research lies in the application of mathematical modeling, statistics and machine learning to computer, informational and social networks. He has published in top scientific journals such as Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, ACM TKDD and PLOS ONE. ...

I am a data mining researcher who investigates how to develop and leverage ground-breaking techniques to explore time series datasets at the confluence of theoretical computer science and application domains like medicine, neuroscience, economics, transportation, and complex decision making. With more than fifteen years of teaching experience in various academic institutions, I am committed to using my love and talent for teaching and research to empower others through education to make a difference in the world . I am one of the WPI faculty included in the inaugural cohort of WPI’s new ...

I have completed my PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2014. Afterwards, I have been a postdoc at Cornell, UC Berkeley and Princeton.  I am interested in how theoretical insights from computer science, discrete mathematics and probability theory can lead to better algorithms in the domains of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Recently I have been studying theoretical questions related to Neural Networks.  

My research examines human-centered computing in digital arts practice. I designed and developed a creative coding environment for the browser, Gibber (http://gibber.cc), that I use both for educational research and audiovisual performances. Gibber is used to teach computational media to middle school, high school and university students in locations around the world, and I've performed with it throughout the US, UK and Asia in the experimental performance genre known as live coding.

Carolina Ruiz is the Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences and the Harold L. Jurist ’61 and Heather E. Jurist Dean's Professor of Computer Science. She joined the WPI faculty in 1997. Prof. Ruiz’s research is in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Data Mining, and their applications to Medicine and Health. She has worked on several clinical domains including sleep, stroke, obesity and pancreatic cancer. Prof. Ruiz and her research group have developed novel, high-performing machine learning methods, including deep learning networks, for analyzing physiological sleep data; and machine ...

As founding Head of the interdisciplinary Data Science program here at WPI, I take great pleasure in doing all in my power to support the Data Science community in all its facets from research collaborations, and new educational initiatives to our innovative industry-sponsored and mentored Graduate Qualifying projects at the graduate level.Having served as the primary advisor and mentor of over 43 Ph.D. students who have secured successful professional careers in computing, I'm proud of all the great accomplishments of students I have had the opportunity to collaborate with. With an h-index of ...

My research interests are in graph theory, discrete mathematics, and theoretical computer science. I am especially interested in studying the structure of very large graphs,; an area that is getting more and more important these days. I enjoy teaching at WPI; in particular, I enjoy the project experience. I am the founder and director of the Budapest Project Center, the first and only WPI Project Center in Eastern Europe. I love sports, especially tennis and soccer.

Before joining WPI, Roee Shraga was a Postdoctoral fellow at the Khoury College of Computer Science at Northeastern University in Boston. His research mainly revolves around data discovery and integration and combines techniques from data management, machine learning, information retrieval and human-in-the-loop. His research has been published in top-tier conferences such as SIGMOD, VLDB, SIGIR, WWW, and ICDE. He is a recipient of the Council for Higher Education [VATAT] scholarship for outstanding data science postdocs. He is also a recipient of several PhD fellowships including the Leonard ...

Gillian Smith, an award-winning game designer, joined WPI in 2017. Her interdisciplinary work merges technical research in AI and HCI with creative practice in textiles and games, with a view towards addressing social issues and broadening participation and perspectives on computing. Their research interests are in computational creativity, game design, computer science education, and the intersection of traditional crafts and computation. In 2021 Professor Smith was appointed director of WPI’s Interactive Media and Games Development program – one of the earliest gaming programs in the ...

 My research is in human-computer interaction and human-AI interaction. One focus of my research is on next-generation interaction techniques, such as brain-computer interfaces, physiological computing, textile sensing, radar sensing, and reality-based interaction. My students and I design, build and evaluate interactive computing systems that use machine learning approaches to adapt and support the user’s changing cognitive state and context. I also investigate novel paradigms for designing with accessibility in mind, particularly for the Deaf community. Much of my work also explores ...

Dr. Xiaoyan (Sherry) Sun received her Ph.D. degree in Information Sciences and Technology from the Pennsylvania State University in 2016 with emphasis on cybersecurity. Her advisor is Dr. Peng Liu. Her research interests lie in cybersecurity, including enterprise-level network security and digital forensics, AI related security, advanced persistent threat detection, IoT security and moving target defense, etc. She is also passionate about education in cybersecurity and digital forensics. Her work in cybersecurity research and education has been supported by National Science Foundation (NSF), ...

Yu-Shan is currently an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Before joining WPI, he was a Lecturer at Clemson University’s School of Computing (2019-2023) and an Adjunct Instructor of CS at the University of South Carolina Upstate (2018). He received a BS in Computer Science from Denison University and a PhD in Computer Science from Clemson University. His research interests are computer science education, software engineering, and formal methods & verification. Recently, he was a co-PI on an NSF Research Grant that ...

Dr. Shubbhi Taneja is an Assistant Teaching Professor at WPI since Fall 2021. Prior to joining WPI, she worked as a tenure-track faculty for three years in the Department of Computer Science of California State University, Sonoma. She completed her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Auburn University, Alabama in 2018. Her primary research interests lie in energy-efficient computing and big data systems.   She collaborates actively with researchers at national labs, faculty engaged in pedagogical research and other disciplines of computer science, particularly ...

My research focuses on systems security and performance.  Consequently, my projects often lie at the intersection of software and hardware. Some of my projects include developing compiler-based defenses for embedded microcontrollers, providing security and privacy for deep learning, and reverse-engineering the behavior of proprietary GPU microarchitectures to improve system performance. 

My research interests are in applied machine learning, computer vision, data science and their applications to education, affective computing, and human behavior recognition. My work is highly interdisciplinary and frequently intersects cognitive science, psychology, and education. Before joining WPI, I was a research scientist at the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning at Harvard University. In 2012, I co-founded Emotient, a San Diego-based startup company for automatic emotion and facial expression recognition. I also love teaching and have lectured, mentored, and tutored ...

My research has primarily focused on Internet application performance and measurement with more recent work examining issues related to Internet privacy. This work has led to a number of research publications and presentations as well as visibility in venues such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and NPR Science Friday. WPI is a great place for me to be a faculty member as I have the opportunity to teach and advise top-quality students as well as pursue interesting directions of research. Teaching students in systems and networking courses provides the opportunity to expose ...

Prior to entering academia, I worked as Chief Technologist, Director of Information Systems, and Director of Technical Operations at various corporations in the information systems and software field. For the past 22 years teaching in university courses, I have aimed to impart this industry experience in my software engineering and databases courses by incorporating real life projects, examples, and whenever possible, collaborations with business organizations such as Brigham & Women's Hospital, the US Treasury, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital. It is ...

My research lies in the intersection of algebraic graph theory and quantum computation. Roughly speaking, I translate problems in quantum computation to problems on graphs, and tackle them using (mostly linear) algebraic methods. My interdisciplinary work on quantum walks and SIC-POVMs has been published on journals spanning a wide range of topics, including quantum information, combinatorics, algebra and physics. I have also coauthored an introductory book about discrete quantum walks on graphs and digraphs.Prior to joining WPI, I was a postdoc fellow at Simon Fraser University, York ...

I joined WPI in September 2004 as Administrative Assistant for the School of Business and two years later I moved to the Computer Science Department as Graduate Administrative Assistant, a position I still hold.I assist the prospective Graduate students with applying  to Computer Science Graduate programs, and I assist the  CS Graduate Coordinator in screening the applications for Admission.I am involved in helping  the enrolled CS Graduate students  succeed in our Computer Science Graduate programs. Provide customer service to Faculty, Staff, Students whoever walks into ...

Katherine (they/them) is the Operations Manager for the Computer Science Department. Their responsibilities include working with the Department Head, assisting faculty, and managing budgetary and financial matters. They previously worked for the Robotics Engineering department, where they were honored to receive the 2020 Rho Beta Epsilon Award for Excellence in Robotics Education. They have a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College in English, with a concentration in Creative Writing, and so naturally they spent several years in both science fiction and academic STEM publishing. They are ...

Beckley came to WPI in 2018 to assist Professor Craig Shue in administering the CyberCorps Scholarship for Service program (SFS). Funded by the National Science Foundation, SFS awards federal scholarships to cybersecurity students pursuing undergraduate or graduate degrees at WPI. Beckley manages outreach, selection, administration, and evaluation for SFS, with particular emphasis on advising and supporting the students in WPI’s SFS cohort. Her role also includes outreach and administration for the DoD CySP scholarship, awarded to cybersecurity students by the U.S. Department of Defense. Prior ...

I began my career in higher ed at a small college working in career services and then spent 15 years at Becker College as an adjunct professor teaching in the Division of Humanities. While there, I worked cross-functionally through various grant-funded positions including co-creating a Student Success Center, Head Softball coach for 5 years, curriculum development team, residence life and tutoring and Academic Advising. More recently I was the Academic Program Manager at an institution that offered the opportunity for international students to come to the US, gain marketable skills and enter ...

Michael is the Lab Manager and System Administrator for the Computer Science department.  A member of the WPI class of 1992, Michael has been associated with WPI Computer Science since 1997.

I am an Administrative Assistant for the Computer Science Department and Bioinformatics & Computational Biology (BCB Program). My responsibility includes working with Department Heads and faculty with undergraduate administrative assistants, purchasing, hourly hiring, timesheet approval, and building/lab access. Before joining WPI, I was an independent college counselor assisting students with their undergraduate and graduate applications. I also held several software engineering positions, including 16 years as a principal software developer at Dell EMC Corporation. I obtained a ...